At school, he was inspired by Schrödinger´s book ‘What is Life?’. Now, several decades later, Leonid Sazanov is awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). The scientist heads a research group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and was honored “for his outstanding achievements in the field of structural biology of membrane protein complexes.” Sazanov is the sixth ISTA scientist to receive the prestigious Schrödinger Award. “I am especially ...

New research indicates that individuals with persistent and worsening metabolic syndrome—which encompasses conditions such as high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, excess abdominal fat, and abnormal cholesterol—face an elevated risk of developing various types of cancer. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. In the study, 44,115 adults in China with an average age of 49 years were categorized into 4 different trajectories based on trends from ...

Grand-offspring of male frogs exposed to the pesticide linuron exhibited changes in their DNA that was linked to significant physiological impacts, a study from Stockholm University reveals. The research highlights the profound transgenerational consequences of environmental pollution on amphibian populations, which are already under threat of extinction. The study is published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Amphibians, particularly frogs, play a crucial role in our ecosystem. However, nearly half of all amphibian species ...

Harvard University and Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (ONO) have launched a strategic alliance to advance research across a broad range of therapeutic areas. This collaborative effort marks a significant commitment to identify and develop first-in-class therapeutics for medical conditions in the areas of oncology, immunology, neurology, and specialty. Through a five-year strategic research alliance spearheaded by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, the request for proposals will be for research projects focused on the validation of novel therapeutic targets from labs across Harvard University including Harvard Medical ...

With so many types of diets being promoted online and on social media, a leading dietitian says flexibility is more sustainable than a rigid diet plan. Joyce Patterson, MPH, RDN, BC-ADM, CPT is a registered dietitian and a diabetes care and education specialist at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, U.S., and she says the science points to a balanced approach. “We live in a world full of messages to restrict, eliminate, and fast, and misconceptions related to diet trends are common, such as macronutrient ...

Surviving childhood cancer does not always mean a clean bill of health, as the treatments that eradicate those cancers can put adult survivors at risk of new cancers and other serious health problems. Despite the existence of surveillance guidelines that recommend screening for adult cancers and other "late effects" of cancer therapy, childhood cancer survivors (CCS) are rarely up to date for recommended tests, according to a large study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.231358 ...

At least one-third of Canadians diagnosed with cancer experience financial distress, called "financial toxicity," which adds to the burden of the diagnosis, write authors in a commentary published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.230677. "Financial toxicity, which refers to the direct, indirect, and emotional costs to patients following a cancer diagnosis, is increasingly recognized as a risk factor for poor health and cancer outcomes," writes Dr. Rachel Murphy, University of British Columbia and BC Cancer Research Institute, Vancouver, ...

Researchers from the University of Waterloo got a valuable assist from artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help capture and analyze data from professional hockey games faster and more accurately than ever before, with big implications for the business of sports.  The growing field of hockey analytics currently relies on the manual analysis of video footage from games. Professional hockey teams across the sport, notably in the National Hockey League (NHL), make important decisions regarding players’ careers based on that information.  “The goal of ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new study of people who speak many languages has found that there is something special about how the brain processes their native language. In the brains of these polyglots — people who speak five or more languages — the same language regions light up when they listen to any of the languages that they speak. In general, this network responds more strongly to languages in which the speaker is more proficient, with one notable exception: the speaker’s native language. When listening ...

A blood test that can accurately detect when someone has not slept for 24 hours has been developed by experts at Monash University, in Australia, and the University of Birmingham, in the UK. This level of sleep deprivation increases the risk of serious injury or fatality in safety critical situations. Published in Science Advances, the biomarker used a combination of markers found in the blood of healthy volunteers. Together, these markers accurately predicted when the study volunteers had been awake for more than 24 hours under controlled laboratory conditions.  The ...

About The Study: Among patients undergoing coronary angioplasty for in-stent restenosis, a paclitaxel-coated balloon was superior to an uncoated balloon with respect to the composite end point of target lesion failure in this multicenter randomized trial that included 600 patients. Paclitaxel-coated balloons are an effective treatment option for patients with coronary in-stent restenosis.  Authors: Robert W. Yeh, M.D., M.Sc., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is ...

The structure and functions of the tip of migrating neurons remain elusive. Here, a research group led by Kazunobu Sawamoto, Professor at Nagoya City University and National Institute for Physiological Sciences, and by Chikako Nakajima and Masato Sawada, staff scientists in his laboratory, has found that the PTPσ-expressing growth cone senses the extracellular matrix and drives neuronal migration in the injured brain, leading to functional recovery. Neural stem cells are present in the postnatal mammalian brain and produce new neurons. New neurons ...

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used numerical simulations to show how conditions on land impact weather during Asian summer monsoons. Focusing on the Tibetan plateau, they studied how varied land conditions combined with fixed maritime conditions illuminate the specific effects of the land on the weather. They found that the significance of land-atmosphere coupling varies greatly from year to year, with unexpectedly low dependence on maritime phenomena like El Niño. Asian monsoon systems impact some of the most highly populated areas of the world, affecting enormous swathes of Asia and ...

Batteries are usually studied via electrical properties like voltage and current, but new research suggests that observing how heat flows in conjunction with electricity can give important insights into battery chemistry. A team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has demonstrated how to study chemical properties of lithium-ion battery cells by exploiting the Peltier effect, in which electrical current causes a system to draw heat. Reported in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, this ...

WASHINGTON  –  U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) research meteorologist James Doyle, Ph.D., joins an international team of scientists to investigate meteorological processes associated with Arctic cold air outbreaks.   From late February through early April, the 45-day international field campaign CAESAR, short for Cold-Air outbreak Experiment in the Sub-Arctic Region, is focused on cold-air outbreaks that occur as cold Arctic air flows-out over warmer open waters between northern Norway and ...

There’s been a long-running debate in Earth sciences over whether mountains are a source of carbon dioxide or if they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through mineral weathering. A new study has found that mountains can be sources or sinks and has identified the tipping point at which they switch from one to the other.    The study — by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Colorado State University and the German Research Centre for Geosciences — found that many mountains exist on a spectrum of removing or releasing carbon, and erosion rates determine the impact of mountains ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Two out of five New Yorkers with children who participated in a recent poll report that a member of their household opts not to work, mostly because child care is too expensive, while child care workers earn among the lowest wages in the state, according to a report released March 8 by the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab. Continuing a multiyear effort with collaborators to determine the “true” cost of child care, “The Status of Child Care in New York State” finds that recent increases in state subsidies helped stabilize ...

A multi-institution team led by researchers at the White River Junction VA Medical Center in Vermont found that Veterans’ blood pressure control worsened due to disrupted care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings were published in the journal Medical Care. The researchers followed a group of nearly 1.65 million Veterans who received their care at VA and who had high blood pressure (hypertension) during two periods—before the pandemic and during the pandemic. In Veterans with controlled blood pressure, researchers found a 7% decline in control during the pandemic compared ...

Diabetes is a very prevalent disease that, unfortunately, still has no treatment. People with diabetes need to monitor their blood glucose levels (BGLs) regularly and administer insulin to keep them in check. In almost all cases, BGL measurements involve drawing blood from a fingertip through a finger prick. Since this procedure is painful, less invasive alternatives that leverage modern electronics are being actively researched worldwide. Thus far, several methods to measure BGL have been proposed; using infrared light is a prominent example, and mid-infrared light-based devices have shown reasonable performance. However, the required sources, ...

For Latinx kids, unreliable access to food at age 4 raises the odds of having fatty liver disease later in childhood by nearly four times, a new UC San Francisco-led study found.  About 5% to 10% of children in the United States have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, putting its prevalence on par with asthma. Pediatric cases have spiked in the last decade, with millions now affected by a disease marked by pain, fatigue and jaundice that can lead to cirrhosis, cancer and organ transplantation. Latinx children and adults ...

East Hanover, NJ – March 8, 2024 – Despite recent declines in the labor force participation rate and employment-to-population ratio, the overall employment trend remains positive for people with disabilities, according to today’s National Trends in Disability Employment – semi-monthly update (nTIDE), issued by Kessler Foundation and the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability (UNH-IOD). Month-to-Month nTIDE Numbers (comparing January 2024 to February 2024) Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ...

The body self-regulates in a process known as homeostasis, and the brain is responsible for this as it is constantly monitoring all of the body’s vital signals. If you need more oxygen, for example, then a message is sent to the brain that then tells the body to adjust your breathing and your heart rate. But the neurons involved in regulating breathing and cardiac rhythm had never been directly observed, until now, thanks to brain recording technology during brain surgery. EPFL neuroscientists, in a collaboration with surgeons and neuroscientists at West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience ...

America’s shortage of primary care doctors and nurse practitioners has a downstream effect in the nation’s operating rooms, a new study finds.  And patients suffer as a result.  In all, people living in areas with the most severe shortages of primary care providers have a much higher risk of having emergency surgery, rather than a scheduled operation,  compared with people with the same condition who live in areas with less-dire primary care shortages.Those living in the areas with the lowest availability of primary care providers ...

Reston, VA—A new PET radiotracer can differentiate diseased tissues from healthy tissues based on fructose metabolism, according to new research published in the March issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Fructose metabolism—or fructolysis—is indicative of a variety of diseases, and by noninvasively mapping fructolysis physicians can more accurately detect diseases and treat them earlier. Glucose is used as the primary biochemical fuel throughout the body, powering key processes like tissue function, growth, and repair. Glucose is also consumed extensively during inflammation and cancer growth and can be visualized with PET scans. Evidence continues to mount that ...

A team of physicists has developed a method to detect gravity waves with such low frequencies that they could unlock the secrets behind the early phases of mergers between supermassive black holes, the heaviest objects in the universe. The method can detect gravitational waves that oscillate just once every thousand years, 100 times slower than any previously measured gravitational waves. “These are waves reaching us from the farthest corners of the universe, capable of affecting how light travels,” said Jeff Dror, Ph.D., an assistant ...